The Invasion of 1950 (16 page)

“I understand that,” Monty growled, adjusting his beret with one hand and waving a hand down at the map. “Where is the main angle of attack?”

DeRiemer looked down at the map and sucked in his breath sharply. Paratroopers had been reported everywhere from Dover to Manchester, an operating area so vast that the reports
had
to be mistakes, or hoaxes, or something had gone seriously wrong with the German war plan. He was more inclined to believe the reports from Dover – a German army group had been massing on the other side of the Channel – but the Germans wouldn’t launch an offensive right into the heart of the British defences, would they? He knew the German Army as well as anyone in Britain, and he knew that they didn’t have anything like that scale of numbers, not in the paratrooper divisions…and they would know better than to drop paratroops into an area where they couldn’t be relieved quickly.

“They have to be mad,” he said, as more reports came in. “They wouldn’t want to spend units like nothing, not when each one is a massive investment in training…”

DeRiemer said, “They have to be landing somewhere, but where?”

“More air strikes in Dover and moving up the east coast,” one of the dispatchers called, updating the map. “I have several reports of more ships being sunk, including one freighter and another destroyer.”

DeRiemer found himself puzzled, trying to understand the enemy tactics; could they have decided to try to land at Dover after all? The confusion wouldn’t last forever, not unless the Germans got very lucky; they might be trying to jam up British radio signals, but they couldn’t have taken out all of the telephone wires. The network had been designed with multiple redundancies built into the system; at a pinch, they could even commandeer the civilian telephone system.

Monty stepped over to a ringing telephone, answered it, and spoke rapidly in response to various questions. “That was the Prime Minister,” he said, as he put the phone down and returned to the balcony, looking down on the massive map. “He wants to put the entire country on alert.”

He didn’t quite manage to keep the contempt out of his voice. “He was also wondering if it was a real invasion,” he said. His voice lightened, as if he were trying to make a joke; DeRiemer didn’t smile at the implied humour. The Prime Minister was seeing
his
policy crashing down in ruins around
his
head. “What do you think?”

“I think that it’s a real invasion,” DeRiemer answered without hesitation. “The Germans aren’t stupid, sir. They won’t have launched a massive attack without some longer-term plan, and why would they launch an attack and give us time to recover from it? We already have our own aircraft up in the air, although overstretched…”

“I’ve ordered the northern squadrons to support Admiral Fraser at Scapa Flow,” Monty said, grimly. He didn’t look as if he were happy with that decision; he had been happy, DeRiemer suspected, as a commander of a large army, rather than the man sitting safe in a bunker while his men fought and died. “The Germans have actually been bombarding Dover from France, using their heavy guns to throw shells across the Channel; are they clearing the way for an attacking force?”

One of the operators interrupted him before DeRiemer could say anything. “General, we have a confirmed report of enemy contact on the ground,” he reported quickly. “The GHQ at Ipswich reported that it came under attack from armed paratroopers wearing German uniforms, who hit the gates and killed several dozen staff officers before they were beaten off.”

Ipswich
, DeRiemer thought, and realised in a moment just what the Germans were doing. “They’re focusing their efforts there,” he said, sharply. Monty looked over at him, his eyes hooded and disbelieving. “There’s a port there, everything they need is there, and it outflanks most of our fixed defences without having to batter their way through the GHQ line.”

Monty spun around at once. “Send out a general signal to the RAF,” he barked. “I want them to funnel as many fighters into the Ipswich area as possible, before the Germans manage to get embedded and impossible to dislodge. Have torpedo-bombers loaded up for anti-shipping strikes and send them out to find the German fleet…”

He turned and addressed another dispatcher. “Do we have any update from Scapa Flow yet?”

“No, sir,” the dispatcher said, professionally. The contrast between her voice and her demeanour made DeRiemer smile. Her mouth moved silently as she spoke into one of the speaking tubes. “There’s been no update from Admiral Fraser, but the RAF units report that the entire dock-works seems to be on fire and burning down to the ground.”

Monty hissed a curse under his breath. “Do you think that they’ll try to land on Scapa Flow directly?”

“I doubt it,” DeRiemer said, after a moment’s thought. “If they’re landing at Felixstowe and spreading out to take other ports, they’ll need to concentrate all of their shipping on that single task alone; taking Scapa Flow against the defences there, even battered, would be tricky and wasteful. They’ll focus everything on that one spot.”

“I’m going to give the Cromwell Alert,” Monty said, shortly. He picked up another phone and barked an order down it, before crashing it back into the cradle with a bang. “The army reserves will be called up at once, and then we can start manoeuvring units to prevent the Germans from expanding too far from their beachheads. The local Home Guard should be giving them something to think about, even now…”

“General, we have some major distortion on the radar bands,” a radar technician said, running over to Monty and saluting. His face was glistening with sweat; DeRiemer noticed the smell and winced inwardly. “I think the Germans are dropping chaff to confuse our radars and make it harder to coordinate the defences.”

“I expected as much,” Monty said, with surprising patience. He wasn't known for treating fools kindly, but under the circumstances, the untested staff members were likely to start cracking up under the stress. “What are they doing at the moment?”

“Sir, before the radar screens filled up, we detected a large flight of enemy aircraft,” the technician said. DeRiemer caught Monty’s eye as they shared the same horrified realisation. The German plan wasn't done unfolding yet. “They’re heading directly for London!”

London, England

They approached from the south-east, heavy turbojets pushing the massive aircraft through the air, each one containing a small number of commandos and their weapons. They were flying lower than any of them would have preferred, but they were all experienced veterans, first at fighting insurgents in Russia and then in jumping from aircraft at dangerously low heights. They held themselves with the confidence that comes from knowing that they were the very best soldiers in the world; the men of the unit knew that with a certainty that was unshakable. Their devotion to the mission was absolute; every man would willingly give his life to ensure that it was completed, or die trying.

Gruppenfuhrer
Otto Skorzeny glanced at his men, sitting on the deck of the aircraft, and smiled to himself. He’d put them all through hell, training them over the last few weeks; the injuries that some of them bore stood in mute testament to Skorzeny’s preferred training methods. They’d practised their tactics and operations against the very best, running through a wide series of possible scenarios and outcomes, all of which had been as realistic as Skorzeny’s ingenuity could develop. They sat there, wearing uniforms that were distinctly British and carrying weapons that were very definitely not British, and he felt a rare moment of pride. Some of them had served with him in Moscow, and he knew their merits. Others had only been through training and counter-insurgency warfare, but all of them had been tested in the training sessions. Those who were found wanting had been dismissed from the unit well before they could drag the entire unit down.

Himmler hadn’t understood, but Skorzeny, who cared nothing for political power, didn’t give a shit about the growing list of enemies he was making in the more regular forces. Kurt Student had understood, but he’d been more of a regular officer than Skorzeny himself; he hadn’t liked the idea of sending paratroopers on what was effectively a suicide mission even if Skorzeny himself was confident that they would make it out of London. If the British caught them wearing their uniforms, they would be quite within their rights to shoot them as spies, although
that
thought made Skorzeny’s smile grow a little wider. They were going to drop in on Atlee personally and kill him; if the British didn’t try to kill them, then maybe some of the odder propaganda from Radio Berlin was actually true.

Skorzeny felt the shape of one of his teeth with his tongue. Himmler had added a secondary mission for him, but both of them had known that it might be impossible to carry out. Himmler, unlike some of the commanders Skorzeny had known, didn’t often try to set impossible targets. Skorzeny and one of his subordinates knew the identity of someone who would help them, but it would be delicate. Himmler had warned him that his agent was unaware of just who he was helping, and when Skorzeny revealed himself, he would have to take control right from the start.

If he were to be captured, something he had privately sworn not to allow, he would have to use the false tooth and kill himself before he could be interrogated. The British wouldn’t be feeling gentle after the commandos had raged through Downing Street, killing everyone they met.

A chime sounded in the aircraft and Skorzeny pulled himself to his feet, making sure to exchange a quick glance with each of his men before they lined up besides the hatch, each man checking his partner’s parachute to ensure that it was perfectly set. a parachute failure would be completely impossible to recover from in time, before the unlucky commando plunged into the ground and died.

He glanced at the hatch as one of the crewmen unlocked it. The chime meant that they were five minutes away from their destination, the patch of air that was directly above The Mall, where they would fall down and only break open the parachutes at the latest possible moment. Skorzeny had lost nearly two dozen men through misjudging their timing, even though every man who tried out for the unit was an experienced paratrooper already, before they tried out for Skorzeny’s own personal badge. Hitler himself had created the silver badge that was the mark of one of his soldiers, a knife crossed with a small gun, and only a thousand German soldiers had the right to wear it. The relationship between the
Waffen-SS
and the regular army wasn’t very good at the best of times, but even the regulars admitted that Skorzeny’s unit was the finest group of paratroopers and light infantry in Germany, perhaps the world.

London was glowing as the aircraft swept in; his eyes tracked lights on the ground, each one providing a possible target for the bombers that were sweeping along ahead of the transports. If everything went to plan, they would drop their loads on the army barracks near the centre of London, although Skorzeny was too experienced a soldier to assume that they would kill every one of the defenders before they could react. Timing was everything in wartime, and the British would have had at least some warning before the bombers attacked even if everything had gone perfectly. An alerted force on the ground would still be armed and dangerous, particularly if they had armoured cars or tanks as well…

He’d given the soldiers a pep talk before they’d left the base, reminding them that they were the best soldiers in the world and that they’d trained heavily for the mission. The moments seemed to grow longer and longer as the transport levelled out for the drop, and then the aircraft shook as an anti-aircraft battery took a shot at it. Skorzeny refused to show any sign of fear. Statistically, it was much more likely that they would die through a damaged parachute than through being shot down by such a weapon. The British would have done better to have had a permanent combat air patrol over London, but instead they’d chosen to draw down their military as much as possible.

“Ten seconds,” the crewman said, as the river flickered as they raced over it. “Five seconds…”

He was first out of the lead aircraft, as it should be; his body free-falling towards the ground. He’d done it before, but the exhilaration racing through his bloodstream was something he only felt when making a combat jump into a war zone. London was burning – he could see flames rising up into the sky from a number of locations – but if they’d knocked out the barracks, there was no sign that they’d succeeded. He yanked on the cord at just the right moment, grunting as the parachute unfurled and slowed his fall, allowing him to land with a bump. He bent his knees and rolled with the motion, as he had been taught, and removed the parachute before it could land on top of him. His men were coming down all around him, releasing their own chutes and drawing their weapons, assembling quickly into combat groups.

He glanced around quickly, comparing what he saw to the maps he’d been forced to memorise; they’d come down almost perfectly, although some of his men had landed in St James’s Park rather than along the road. He blew a whistle and the first team advanced around him, while the second team headed off in the direction of Buckingham Palace. Shooting broke out almost at once as the security forces on the ground realised that they were under attack, but their firing was off and ill-coordinated, a result of their surprise. Skorzeny pushed his men forward, racing against time, and the paratroopers punched through the British defenders.

“They’ll be bringing up reinforcements,” he cried, to one of his men. The subordinate nodded and detailed off some of the parachutists to block the roads and prevent the British from launching an immediate counter-attack. They ran into more armed soldiers and a brief gunfight broke out, ending when the British soldiers were all wiped out.

They’d fought to the last man, Skorzeny noted.  He gave them a nod of respect and kept his team moving, even as more firing could be heard in the distance, coming from Buckingham Palace. The gates of Downing Street loomed up in front of him, barring the way to the unpretentious row of houses that served as the governing centre of Britain, but the team knocked them down. There was no time to waste and they didn’t care about the damage; Himmler had told him, in a rare mood of openness, that Speer had already drawn up the plans to knock down Downing Street and replace it with a building in the best
Reich
style, one fit to rule an empire. The handful of stunned policemen on guard didn’t put up much of a fight, even though there were more barricades than they’d been led to expect.  It puzzled him that there was so little security protecting the British Government.  There was a whole division of SS troops protecting Hitler.

He pushed the issue aside as the team placed explosive charges on the most famous front door in the world. Taking cover as the charges detonated and watching as the door literally disintegrated under the impact of the explosives.  The remains caved in, allowing the commandos to rush into the building. They immediately ran into a terrified-looking elderly man. Skorzeny knocked him down and kept moving. They’d been supplied with pictures of all of the important men and women in the Downing Street complex, and he wasn't on the list. There were SS units that wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot down anyone who got in their way, but as long as they weren’t a threat and stayed out of the way, Skorzeny was content to leave them alive.

A female scream from above brought the commandos pounding up the stairs, running into a small room with at least seven beds, each one holding a young lady; Skorzeny checked them all, realised that they were Atlee’s secretaries, and led the team onwards. They weren’t important; the next room turned out to hold one of Atlee’s friends, who was shot out of hand. Henry Teasdale was well known for his hostile attitude to Nazi Germany.

“They’re not in their beds,” one of the commandos shouted, as the team broke into the Atlee’s bedroom. “They must have made it into the bomb shelter.”

Skorzeny led the race back downstairs, ignoring the growing screams and shouts of panic from the girls; they would have much more to worry about if they ever ran into one of the units the SS used to spread terror in an occupied zone. The handful of men he’d left on the ground floor nodded to him – salutes were forbidden in a combat zone – and waved to a set of bodies, one of them unmistakably Lord Halifax. Skorzeny checked quickly, just in case, and confirmed it; the Foreign Secretary had been caught in his rooms and killed by one of the commandos.

The search took only five minutes, but it felt like an eternity to Skorzeny, who was grimly aware that the British were gathering their resources to strike back and exterminate his team. He could still hear gunfire and explosions all over the area, but that might mean that the team had been beaten off from Buckingham Palace, or that they’d succeeded in their mission and were on their way back to rendezvous with the main unit before they started to execute the second part of the plan. The British barracks couldn’t have been totally destroyed, which meant they could expect a counter-attack at any moment, despite the chaos and the fighting in the sky, high above. The British had probably directed their fighters to engage the
Luftwaffe
high over London, although the transports would have beaten a retreat already; they were useless once their paratroopers had been dropped onto the ground.

“Found it, Otto,” one of his men called, finally. The unit didn’t stand on formality, something else that irked the regulars and most of the remainder of the
Waffen-SS
as well; if a man qualified to join, as far as Skorzeny was concerned, he could call him by his first name. “They had the entrance well hidden, but we found it once we checked all the walls and floors.”

“A bookcase,” Skorzeny said, shaking his head. The British had been clever; some designer had created a mechanism for allowing the bookcase to move backwards and forwards, as if it were a safe in a bank, hiding the entrance to the underground bunker. He nodded to his engineers and they started work at once, placing more shaped charges against the bookcase and then standing well back as the charges detonated. This time, their target stood up better to their assault; the bookcase disintegrated, but the armoured door behind it barely fell off its hinges. Two commandos grasped hold of it and pulled hard, allowing a third to throw a belt of grenades into the space beyond, causing an explosion that blew the door off its hinges.

Three commandos moved forward quickly and rappelled down the shaft, breaking through into what was clearly a lift. Skorzeny followed them as shooting burst out, painfully loud in such a confined space. Atlee would have a few defenders in a position to hold the bunker, even though they must know that they were trapped without any means of escape. His men were pinned down and radical action had to be taken. He unhooked a grenade of his own and threw it towards the defenders, who were only half-seen in the gloom. The explosion rewarded him with a scream from someone, but the enemy fire didn’t dwindle; he guessed that he’d hit a non-combatant with the explosion. He pulled out several more grenades and threw them, one by one, into the room; this time, the enemy firing trailed off and his men were able to race into the bunker. The noise of grenades and firing grew louder for a moment, shaking the air and sending dust clouds cascading down on his shoulders, and then faded away; Skorzeny lowered himself down and entered the bunker.